LocostUSA.com

Yup, if your going to have stability control that's going to knock all the sideways fun on the head then it may as well be FWD.

FWD isn't my cup of tea but no denying it would be a decently fast package with it and much faster, if less desirable, than the RWD setup.

OMG what a bunch of four-wheel snobs

did you guys even read the first drive report I linked?

I would challenge any of you to take a drive in a polaris Slingshot, beat the crap out of it a bit, and not have fun

_________________
The B-3 build log: http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=13941 unfortunately, all the pictures were lost in the massive server crash

The beginnings of the Jag Special,
https://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=19012
Again, all pictures were lost.

I read it. IMHO your homebuilt RT would be much more satisfying. No bells, no whistles, NO TRACTION CONTROL

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Too much week, not enough weekend.

OOPS I did it again
http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=17496

Blood Sweat and Beers
http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=15216

ya I know, just takin' the piss of you guys, "harrumph, it might as well be front drive, harrumph, CG balance, harrumph small rear tire (its a 265/35-18, small? what?) Harrumph, my locost will beat it in a drag race, harrumph..." y'know?

In the article, they were able to turn the stability control off, and the traction control allows enough tire slip to do a burnout. I quote,

"... Even when it’s on, some wheel slip is allowed, just enough to leave a long black stripe on the pavement and make it look like you’ve launched the Slingshot more than a few times..."

so there's that.

Yup, I'm pretty proud of my machine, and it cost me 1/5th (my own SWAG, I never keep records of $$, I really, who cares?), of the expected Slingshot price, and yup its fun to drive, really fun in fact, its an incredible chick magnet, and I think it's the kewlest thing on the road ever...but, I'm happy to see a major powersports company bring the reverse trike thing to the road with a new design, with some modern design techniques, materials, and philosophy. And, compared to ANY modern car, even the econoboxes, its bare bones.

I admit, I'm in their target demo. the Anthracite has grown on me, the red is garish.

_________________
The B-3 build log: http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=13941 unfortunately, all the pictures were lost in the massive server crash

The beginnings of the Jag Special,
https://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=19012
Again, all pictures were lost.

Find me a bad driving report from the last 30 years.

Motor Journalism is bought by the highest bidder and even the bottom of the ladder still caters for them and then there's the advertising ....

Recent example ..
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/n ... 5212efc9d8

About 20 years ago I went to the house of a then current Editor of Motor magazine and I was flabbergasted at the amount of product gifted to him by car manufacturers - besides the cars continually on offer for free including fuel card and driver if required.

One thing I love about Top Gear, the English version at least, is they call an apple an apple.

Seriously, try and find a print/net magazine who would say these things about a BMW ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UwOBKSHl-c

No trips to Switzerland skiing to see the release of our 2014 models for you Mr Clarkson!

Stability control? HA! My police trike would run circles around that until I fell over. Okay, it would run circle. Half circle?

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Champion/Book:114x42x11
Gibbs/Haynes:122x42x14
VoDou:113x44x14
McSorley 442:122x46x14
Collins 241:127x46x12

Now THAT was funny! Good one, MV8!

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JD, father of Quinn, Son of a... Build Log
Quinn the Slotus:Ford 302 Powered, Mallock-Inspired, Tube Frame, Hillclimb Special
"Gonzo and friends: Last night must have been quite a night. Camelot moments, mechanical marvels, Rustoleum launches, flying squirrels, fru-fru tea cuppers, V8 envy, Ensure catch cans -- and it wasn't even a full moon." -- SeattleTom

Challenge accepted.

It has been my experience that the american motorcycle magazines ordinarily don't gush about the bikes that don't function so well, and I actually do have a 30 year stack of them at home. I have a ten year stack of them here in my desk at work, and just grabbing one at random out of the topiof the drawer, the Cycle World Feb 2007 issue, page 45, the article complains about teh Suzuki M109R hunting for optimal throttle openings on the highway, and that the combination of a light throttle, relatively light flywheel and reverse torque thru the shaft drive..."These traits in normal riding can be annoying and make it difficult to ride smoothly..."

so there's at least one complaint right there. I can look through more of my stack if you like



yeah, I hear that alot. its not quite true accross the board. there are certainly some magazines that do suck up a bit - And I've read 'em, and it's pretty obvious, the old Cycle magazine was like that when Floyd Clymer (Yes THAT Clymer) was the publisher - but not all of them and Cycle World is one of those which has a high reputation for integrity.

the problem is that modern cars and motorcycle s are actually pretty damn good, they all function REALLY well. I mean, I leaned to drive on cars from the 1960s, and man, even some of the new ones were shite compared to my 90,000 mile Chevy HHR. So its hard to find real complaints, not like during the 60s and 70s.

the guys on the UK Top Gear are great Jeremy complains about everything. he's called the Caterham a car for posing wankers. imagine what hed say abouit the average Locost about the B-3! HA!

_________________
The B-3 build log: http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=13941 unfortunately, all the pictures were lost in the massive server crash

The beginnings of the Jag Special,
https://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=19012
Again, all pictures were lost.

Rob, I like your car but this one just rubs me the wrong way for some reason. Something about the power level and the aggressive styling leaves me cold.

It seems out of the envelope of what regulates expect, so I wonder if it will cause the 3 wheelers to move towards car regs instead of motorcycle regs... That would be a pretty undesirable event.

Most FWD cars are really 3 wheelers when cornering. So it's not that different, but the FWD cars have the advantage that their third wheel is always on the outside of the corner. These three wheelers have less track width ( on average ). So that has to impact their cornering performance.

I suppose this can be power slid out of corners, just like a Camaro...

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
SketchUp collection for LocostUSA: "Dream it, Build it, Drive it!"
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Actually I do believe that Clarkson would be very appreciative of anyone who constructs a car themselves.

He's an interesting guy actually, have a look for his non-car documentaries.

Yeah, I've spent a day or two when work was slow-ish perusing the many youtube viddys there are of him...some from when he was quite young. very accomplished guy, seems like he'd be a fun hang.

I sometime think quite a lot of his snarkyness on the show, is just for the show. sure is funny, the three of them have great rapport.

Marcus, I agree about the dim view the safety regulators will take of these kinds of vehicles. we may be in for a bit of a "golden age" Until somebody gets hurt or killed, and then - since the car culture here invariaby blames the vehicle for the mistakes of the driver - they'll go the way of the 3-wheel ATV, be "safetied" into undesireability, or state legislatures - who know nothing about vehicles or safety for that matter - will change the laws to make them illegal as they are now.

the great advantage to reverse trikes, like mine, or the Slingshot, or Morgans, is that they are often classed as motorcycles, and thus can avoid many of the automobile regs that do and weight and complexity that actually get in the way of controllability and driving enjoyment.

I think part of the Slingshots weight issue comes from the choice of drivetain, and the beefiness required to give it production levels of reliability and sturdiness with that drivetrain.

we don't have to worry about that, as scratchbuilders, y'know? we sort of don't care if the car will take 200,000 miles of beatings on the public roads without cracking a weld or rusting thru a tube. But a major manufacturere has to care.

I do wonder what the inital design weght goal was, and whether they missed it.

track on teh new polaris is a bit over 69 inches, not particularly narrow, though that's mitigated by the single 265-width rear tire.

another article abot it on cycleworld.com, short interview with the lead engineer. doens't really reveal much. couple good points though.

http://www.cycleworld.com/2014/07/29/interview-james-holroyd-polaris-slingshot-engineer/

_________________
The B-3 build log: http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=13941 unfortunately, all the pictures were lost in the massive server crash

The beginnings of the Jag Special,
https://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=19012
Again, all pictures were lost.

I don't see it. These types of trikes have been around for numerous decades, and many states even have regulations specifically relating to trikes that you sit in a seat with a seatbelt and control it with a steering wheel. There is no reason for any three wheelers (car or motorcycle component based) to face stricter government regulation until they achieve more widespread popularity.

With the ability to have the computer brake wheels independently, it's a shame that none of the manufacturers have used this to make a much more entertaining FWD reverse trike.

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-Justin

"Orville Wright did not have a pilots license." - Gordon MacKenzie

that's exactly the point, the reason they're given such afterthough-ish treatment, is because they're rare few and far between, and nobodys gotten hurt - or killed - in them, and thus have they stayed pretty much off the safety radar. BUt, cue the video goodness that includes powerslides and dontus...

http://www.motorcycle-usa.com/1793/Motorcycle-Video/2015-Polaris-Slingshot-First-Ride-Video.aspx

once vehicles like this become popular, and their numbers rise, they're gonna get crashed, and folks will get hurt, and then then "Something Must Be Done About It!", because the car culture in this country usually blames the vehicle for the mistakes of the driver. This I predict! here's a dollar, now go get a cup of coffee...what? oh okay, here's $1.25.

Market dymamics will force other mfgrs join the fray, if they see polaris making money on this machine. It would not surprise me to find that some are in preliminary concept stages now, though they might be waiting to see what happens with the Slingshot.



what? Driven, you're kidding, right? can we just stop perpetuating that myth? If FWD was so entertaining, you'd all be building FWD cars, right? I don't notice that that's a thing around here. Y'know? I mean, can we be honest? Comparitively, given all else equal, FWD is a BORE. There, I said it.

Nothing like a little FWD power-on understeer to make you wish it was RWD. Although, like RWD, FWD allows you to steer with power, if what you want to do is steer straight off the road into the trees...um, as opposed to - in the interest of full disclosure - looping it and steering straight off the road into the trees, backwards.

apparently, Bosch tuned the stability and tracton control to allow both donuts, and drifting can't do that with FWD. looks like a bit of a sporty ride.

lively discusson Gents!

_________________
The B-3 build log: http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=13941 unfortunately, all the pictures were lost in the massive server crash

The beginnings of the Jag Special,
https://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=19012
Again, all pictures were lost.

Fixed. Reverse trikes have been around for over a century, and all their various attempted forms have yet to go anywhere even close to mainstream. The Slingshot is certainly not the revolutionary idea that will be require to bring them out of the shadows of obscurity, nor is any other trike (be it concept or production) that I have seen to date. In my opinion, the Elio is far and away the closest to achieving that title at this point in time...And it's still got a LOOOOOOONG ways to go before we have anything to worry about on the regulatory side.

Really? According to who? Just because it hasn't been done in a production capacity before, doesn't mean it can't be. It just takes looking beyond the conventional. Independently controlled brakes can be wonderful things, even in manually actuated form. Once (IF) the right company put the right engineer in charge, all it would take is the right stability and traction control programming to also "allow" a high-performance production FWD to do both donuts and drifting.


A "boring" FWD Mini:

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-Justin

"Orville Wright did not have a pilots license." - Gordon MacKenzie

the many people who bought Morgan (and other branded) three wheelers, and made them rather mainstream in the british market during the 1920s and 1930s (due to three wheel cars being taxed at a lower rate) would argue with you...if they were alive, which they probably aren't...so...um, I'm arguing as their proxy? Works for me.

in order to see the true place of the three-wheeled vehicles in the toality of the automotive world, you really have to look outside the american market. The market here does not favor three wheel vehicles, and we never had any weird tax laws that based on how many wheels contacted the ground, or engine bore diameter.


well you quoted me, so, me. so there. so anyway...



ERRRT! Driven gets the buzzer. applying the brake to make a car slide or drift is a handbrake turn (adn that's what's going on in the viddy you linked) , whether the brake is applied by either the robot in the dash panel or the nut behind the wheel. Proper donuts require rotating the car in what is fundamentally a tightly oversteered circle, with the rear tires spinning so that their slip angle describes a arc that is functionally concentric with the much smalled slip angle being described by the front tires.

In a FWD car, how are you going to spin the rear tires to perform that donut? Donuts, can be driven into and continued as long as you have the power down. Can't do that in a FWD. If you can, then its not FWD. AWD can do that. FWD? ERRRT! nope.

Oh sure, you can lock up the rear tires and spin it, but, that's not a donut.

Cue the Handbrake turn video link. I bet he's got 60-70 PSI in those dinky rear tires. I wonder if he's also got split control braking on the front wheels, since when he's doing those nifty little spins, the inside front wheel does not appear to be turning, but the car is pivoting around it.



OKay, I'll give him the Stoppie can't do that in a RWD.

OMFG that video is such a honeypot! Irish autotesting? whaaaaat? How did I not know about that?
Justin I'll make you pay!

;-P

_________________
The B-3 build log: http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=13941 unfortunately, all the pictures were lost in the massive server crash

The beginnings of the Jag Special,
https://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=19012
Again, all pictures were lost.